Investigation of GaAs PCSS Triggered by Laser Pulses With Different Parameters

Photoconductive semiconductor switch (PCSS) has many advantages, such as low time jitter, fast response, high repetition rate, compact size, easy integration, and so on. It has extensive applications in the field of pulse power. The laser pulse adopted to trigger the PCSS exerts significant influences to its output characteristics. The parameters to characterize a laser pulse include rise time, pulsewidth, laser energy, wavelength, and so on. In this paper, a new concept of laser power is proposed and the influences that laser pulse exerts to the PCSSs output characteristics are studied. A laser diode that emits laser pulse with a dominant wavelength of 905 ns is employed to trigger a semi-insulating GaAs PCSS, which is vertical structure. Laser energy is fixed to 6.4 μJ by synchronous adjustment of both laser pulsewidth and laser power. Thus, the influences of triggering laser power to the PCSS are studied. The rise times of triggering laser pulses include 10 and 80 ns. The experiment results show that the influences that laser power exerts to the PCSS vary when the rise time of laser pulses differs.